Tuesday, June 24, 2008

We don't know when it happened, but Sprint has added another gotcha to their roaming limitations. Formerly, Sprint customers who used more than half of of their monthly minutes roaming had the potential of having their service terminated. Now Sprint has set an 800-minute roaming maximum, on- or off-peak, that will also get you the boot. The terms: "Sprint may terminate service if (1) more than 800 minutes, (2) a majority of minutes or (3) a majority of data kilobytes in a given month are used while roaming."

Unfortunately, Sprint has some of the best roaming agreements among all carriers (for now) and some users have come to depend on this. Fortunately, Sprint is still expanding their own network so roaming is needed less and less. Also, we have not heard complaints that anyone has actually been kicked out as a result of excessive roaming, but it adds a cloud of uncertainty that Sprint's broadcast commercials try to specifically address. The new limit may have come as a result of their new "Unlimited" plans.

While Sprint/Nextel is losing customers at an alarming rate, the last thing they need is a reason, or even a hint, to terminate even more business. Raise foot...Aim...Fire!

2 comments:

Anonymous
said...

My husband and I use Sprint and when we checked the website for coverage in our area it looks like we should have great service. When we got the phones it turns out we have barely any service and our phones roam on their own. We were missing calls and dropping calls left and right so I called them to make sure roaming was part of our plan. I was assured that we had free roaming and it was fine. My husband is a manager and has to be available for calls any time of day so it's not an option for us to not have good cell service. Just this week were were notified that we would be terminated if we keep using roaming and we've used Sprint for over a year now. If they won't let us use roaming, we won't have cell phone service even though it says we should on the website. It's all very frustrating and at this point I think it would be best if they terminated us. That way we could find a provider that actually does have service here and not one that just advertises they do.

You are not getting a good signal from either Sprint OR its preferred roaming carrier. Enter an invalid phone number (like "1234") and see if the intercept gives the name of the roaming carrier (or its SID). This may tell you what carrier NOT to switch to. That will narrow down your choices. Sprint may let you out of your contract just by asking since they're losing money on you anyway. Check the Coverage Finder for a different carrier, and use their 2 week tryout period at home.

We have reviewed each page of their web site, read all the disclosures and added up their plans. We just don't see how Xfinity Mobile ...

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